


act one: by firelight

by pegaeae



Series: the life, the lyna, the legend [2]
Category: Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-21
Updated: 2018-12-21
Packaged: 2019-09-23 17:44:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 777
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17084834
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pegaeae/pseuds/pegaeae
Summary: unimpressive, ugly, hardly worth his timehe loves how she looks painted in blood





	act one: by firelight

His flirtations, his  _wooing_ , seem to be getting him nowhere. No amount of honeyed words or lingering gazes or brief touches gets her to look at him without that barely masked irritation. He’s never met a woman he couldn’t flirt into his bed, though, and her apparent disinterest only makes the game more exciting.

She’s not the prettiest of women–he’s had lovelier, seen  _far_  lovelier–with her angular face and sullen mouth. Her eyes are large and dark, liquid and thickly lashed enough that they resemble halla eyes–wide and frightened, like prey. Her hair is stark black and bone straight from filth, no volume to it whatsoever, hanging lankly around her shoulders. She’s distinctly unimpressive–something he thought when he first saw her walk directly into his ambush.

His opinion had changed, of course, once he found himself with a blade at his kidney and another at his throat, the ghostlike, unimpressive warden behind him before he, a trained master assassin, even noticed.

And when she had accepted, however begrudgingly, his offer of loyalty–that was when he decided this unimpressive, ugly little Warden was someone he wanted to tumble.

It’s not that she’s frigid. She speaks warmly to her Grey Warden companion, Alistair, and to the witch, Morrigan. In fact, Zevran sees the way Alistair tracks their dear Warden with puppy eyes, completely lovestruck. Mahariel seems as unaffected by Al’s tender fumblings as she is by Zevran’s flirtations and come-hither eyes. He wonders if perhaps the Warden is interested in women–but that doesn’t seem to be it, either, with the way she shrugs off Leliana’s warm advances.

He sidles up to where she is sitting in front of the fire, dropping down next to her with fluid, catlike grace. She hardly spares him a glance, continuing what she’s doing: mending a well-worn, forest green tunic. She doesn’t have any thread that matches and there’s a long line of off-grey where she’s stitching up a tear on one of the sides.

Even by firelight, he can tell the fabric and make of the garment is superior. The ultra-fine woven cloth does not even snag on Mahariel’s calluses, and the fabric where the tunic was cut did not even fray, making it exceedingly easy to stitch back together.

“Is that Dalish make?” Zevran asks in his easy way. He knows it is, but the point of the question is to get unimpressive little Lyna to  _talk_  to him.

She pauses in her mending and he notices her needle does not reflect the firelight. Bone, then. A surprisingly crude tool to use to repair such a fine garment.

Not to mention he’s never even seen her wear this tunic. She’s constantly in the charcoal gray and and blue Warden uniform except for when she’s washing or mending that–and then she’s in a shapeless tunic and a pair of hemmed trousers that look like she probably got them as hand-me-downs from Leliana.

(and she never wore shoes.) 

“It is,” she says in response, voice low. Zevran’s mouth curls upwards, catlike, satisfied that she would speak to him tonight.

If there is one thing about the drab little Warden that was not completely unremarkable, it is her voice. Lyrical and surpriginly low for a woman of her size, it sends shivers up his back. He wants to much to hear her moan his name when he finally tumbles her.

“Have you had it all along? I’ve never seen you wear anything Dalish.”

She ties off her thread and bites it free, shaking out the garment and folding it before she responds.

“I  know you’re not here to ask questions about my clothes, Zevran. What do you want?”

“Is it so hard to believe I simply wish to make small talk with a lovely woman such as yourself?” Zevran puts a hand over his heart in mock hurt.

Mahariel gives him a flat look from behind her tangle of limp hair, heavy brows furrowing. Nothing can make those big, glistening halla eyes of hers any smaller, though, and the effect  _ought_  to have been humorous. Somehow it is intimidating instead; perhaps it has to do with the blade Zevran finds pressed against his belly as soon as he tries to slide closer to her.

“Message received, my Warden,” he lifts his hands up and she removes her blade, smoothly sheathing it. “May I ask though–who was it who taught you to move like that? I thought the Dalish did not kill anything but brigands and animals.”

“You thought wrong,” she says. “If you put your hands anywhere near me again, I will remove them from your wrists.”


End file.
